Blood On The Rising Sun

The Truth about the Philippine Rape by a member of General MacArthur’s U.S. Counter-Intelligence Staff—Adalia Marquez BLOOD ON THE RISING SUN is a true story of life in Manila under Japanese occupation and, later, during the American liberation. There have been many tales told about guerrilla activities and underground operations in the Philippines but in almost all of them the chief protagonists are Americans. BLOOD ON THE RISING SUN is the story of the fights against the Japanese waged by a Filipino woman, her husband, and their friends and presents an aspect of the Philippine resistance that has never yet been told. Adalia’s account of life in the prison hellhole of Fort Santiago describes the terrible privations and tortures the inmates were forced to undergo. Later on Adalia worked for the American Counter-Intelligence Corps and helped pin authenticated collaboration charges on many Manilans who had sold out to the enemy. While carrying on this task she received numerous threats against her life and the lives of her children. On the Philippines was staged the Bataan Death March, as well as the crucial landings on the Island of Leyte. Many who will read the story of those two unforgettable episodes of the War of the Pacific will feel deeply grateful to Adalia, her husband Tony, and the hundreds of other brave Filipinos who sacrificed all for freedom. BLOOD ON THE RISING SUN is not a book of light fiction. The truth asserts itself and here in this book Adalia Marquez writers with eloquence and simplicity, which go direct to the human heart.

Adalia Marquez was a police reporter living in Manila under the Japanese Occupation during World War 2 when her husband was arrested by the Japanese Military Police for aiding the resistance. Following his escape, suspicion falls upon Adalia and she is detained in his place, along with her two children, and imprisoned in Fort Santiago. Facing torture and starvation, Adalia contacts the Filipino underground and agrees to help them from inside the prison in return for much-needed food and medicine. With a talent for manipulating her captors, Adalia is able to evade detection long enough to provide for herself and her children, as well as other detainees in urgent need of sustenance, until the deliverance of V-J Day.

The author of Into the Dark Water “balances scholarly research with accessible storytelling” to tell the heroic WWII account of Torpedo Boat Squadron 3 (Midwest Book Review). During the opening days of World War II in the Pacific, a small group of American sailors in the Philippines were propelled into the forefront of the fighting against the navy and air power of Imperial Japan. They were manned with six small, wooden PT-boats and led by a courageous, larger-than-life character in Lt. John D. Bulkeley. As America’s defense of the Philippines crumbled under the weight of a massive Japanese assault, the courageous activities of Bulkeley’s Torpedo Boat Squadron 3 made headlines across the United States—often as the only good news coming from the bleak Pacific front. The unit achieved everlasting fame by evacuating Gen. Douglas MacArthur from the front. Then, the squadron continued to fight on until all six of its torpedo boats were lost under fire. The fate of the doomed American defenders was sealed when the Japanese won the battle for the islands in the spring of 1942. The exploits of the unit were immortalized in the blockbuster 1945 movie They Were Expendable, starring John Wayne and Robert Montgomery, but since then, the saga of Bulkeley and his men has slipped into history. Under a Blood Red Sun revives the story of the Philippine PT-boats through the intertwined accounts of Bulkeley and his subordinate officers and men. It is a story of the courage and sacrifice of men thousands of miles from their homeland, representing American gallantry and fighting prowess, giving the Japanese a taste of what was to come their way.

"[T]he story of a father and son separated by war and circumstance--and whose encounter with the legendary Holy Grail will change their lives forever-- an epic tale of love, loss, betrayal, vengeance, and retribution that follows Texas Ranger Hackberry Holland on his journey to reunite with his estranged son, Ishmael, a captain in the United States Army"--